William Christenberry's Ten Southern Photographs

The last copy of a limited-edition set of photographs taken by photographer William Christenberry—going for $130,000—reveals his technical genius and enduring friendship with a curatorial family dedicated to sharing his work

IN 1981, WASHINGTON, D.C.'S Middendorf/Lane and Sander Galleries produced 21 copies of a portfolio of works by the photographer
William Christenberry,
entitled Ten Southern Photographs. Shot between 1978 and 1981 in the small, dusty towns of Hale County, Alabama, the images represent Christenberry's first foray into shooting large-format stills, which he began exploring with a Deardorff camera in 1977. While he initially won acclaim for coaxing profound three-inch-square shots of the American South out of an inexpensive Brownie camera—"perfect little poems," Walker Evans called them—it was the large-format prints that crystallized Christenberry's trademark style. The formally composed, emotionally subdued visions of the rural South are rendered in rich colors and flawless detail in the portfolio's 10 images, which feature a cross-section of Christenberry's totemic obsessions. In one, an invasive kudzu swallows the entire frame, save for a patch of red soil; in another, a Palmist building in Havana, Alabama—a crumbling edifice Christenberry has returned to many times over the course of his career—peeks out from behind a copse of trees, as if ashamed of its condition.

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The last complete commercially available copy of this portfolio is now for sale at the Feroz Galerie in Bonn, Germany, bearing the hefty price tag of $130,000. The vintage-dye transfer prints are exquisitely preserved, having never been removed from their green clamshell folio box until now. "There's a definite heightening of technical quality with these photographs," says
Christopher Phillips,
curator at the International Center of Photography in New York. "They reward the viewer with more detail, color and tonal nuance." Christenberry's skill with color came from years of practice; though his format was unpopular among art photographers, he'd used it to create studies for painting, his original metier. While contemporary and fellow Southerner
William Eggleston
is often celebrated for pioneering noncommercial color photography, it was Christenberry who introduced William Eggleston to the medium in the early 1960s.

The limited-edition portfolio came into the possession of a small gallery on the banks of the Rhine via
Julian Sander,
owner and president of Feroz Galerie, who also happens to be the son of
Gerd Sander,
Christenberry's former gallerist in Washington, D.C. and New York. The initial Sander-Christenberry connection was forged in D.C.'s bustling art scene in the '70s (the photographer still lives in the capital today). Gerd—the grandson of
August Sander,
one of the most important German photographers of the early 20th century—moved to the States in 1975 to open his own gallery. He soon became one of the city's preeminent art dealers, alongside
Harry Lunn, Jr.
, who together have been credited with helping to create the market for fine-art photography in America. Gerd not only produced the original portfolio in 1981, he also helped Christenberry learn to use the technically daunting Deardorff camera.

"Julian represents another generation carrying on the work of preserving and presenting photography to the public," says Christenberry, now 76. "The Sander family has been doing this for many, many years." While the artistic tradition passed down via Sander is concerned with the craft of photography, Julian argues that the real significance of his family heritage goes deeper. "The legacy of August is much more about humanity than photography," he says. "He recognized that all humanity has a foundational value."

It's an idea echoed in the subtleties of Christenberry's work. At first glance, the frank, unblinking images in Ten Southern Photographs—decrepit cotton gins and warehouses; humid, people-less landscapes; a faded five-cent sign on a mottled brick wall—suggest an American South in the grip of decay, a provincial past beyond recovery. But on closer inspection and taken as a whole with Christenberry's oeuvre, they exhibit an underlying strain of hopefulness, even idealism. "He was looking at the objects, landscapes and buildings of his home county as signs and symbols of who we are as Americans," says Phillips. "Where we've been, where we are now and where we're going. This kind of attitude, I think, Walker Evans almost invented—the search for a usable past." It's a balance, Julian says, reflected in the photographer's character. "There are layers of darkness as well as humility and gentleness."

The work of the Alabama-raised artist will be making another appearance on European soil later this month at the Fundación Mapfre in Madrid, with an exhibition that coincides with a new monograph published by D.A.P—the largest overview of the artist's work to date. The 260-page volume is divided into 13 sections—each dedicated to a recurring theme in Christenberry's works—and covers the range of his career, from early black-and-white photos of interiors clearly influenced by Christenberry's original hero, Evans, to the buildings he returns to annually, including the Bar-B-Q Inn and his grandparents' home in Alabama. "Though most of the subject material he's dealing with goes back to his own childhood, this isn't a personal quest," says Phillips. "He's doing a serious, long-term reflection on American culture, providing guideposts and points of reference he feels are important for us not to forget."

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